Countries of Africa are facing the grim reality of their backwardness in technological advancement and the continent has continued to struggle to take its place in the world map of innovation and invention that usually come with investment in research and development and the technological outcomes.
The situation of the continent is pathetic as most of the countries especially in sub-Saharan Africa have not committed enough percentage of their GDP to research and development. None of the countries so far has committed up to 1 per cent of their GDP to research and innovation. Nigeria, the most populous country in the region just recently announced that it will commit 0.5 per cent of its GDP to research and innovation.
According to available records from Research gate, the African continent has been spending the least amount of research and development in the world. It allocated an average of 0.05 per cent of its GDP to research and development.
It said further that this is far from the one per cent target set by the African Union for the region by 2020. Similarly, expenditures by African countries represent only 1.53 per cent of all the research and development expenditures globally. The share of researchers per million is also minimal: an average of 14 researchers per million people compared with the benchmark, United States of America, of 2719 researchers per million.
“This is 194 times less than the USA’s share. Studies have shown that R&D expenditure has great capacity to promote innovations, create jobs, promote economic growth and increase the standard of living. Spending on research and development is expected to address the likely future social and economic crisis associated with a burgeoning youth in the continent,” the study said.
This situation perhaps spurred the Director General of the National Office for Technology Acquisition and Promotion (NOTAP), Dr. DanAzumi Mohammed Ibrahim to call on African countries (Nigeria inclusive) to embrace innovation and technology for sustainable economic development of the continent.
Dr. Ibrahim made this call while presenting the keynote address at the 2022 Commemoration of African Day for Technology and Intellectual Property Rights held at the Innov8 Hub, Airport Road, Abuja on Tuesday with the theme “Creating economic value from indigenous technology.”
The NOTAP boss said that developed countries are better placed in the global order because of advancement in technology even as he tasked all African countries to invest more on research and development to ensure the technological advancement of the continent.
“It is technology that demarcates between developed countries and developing countries in innovation, invention and research. We regulate the inflow of foreign technology in this country and we see the quantum amount of the technologies that come into Nigeria and we see the quantum amount of money that leaves this country.
“No country will develop so long as it continues to depend on other countries for its technologies. As long as we continuously remain within the shackles of dependency of imported goods and services, there is no way we can develop.
“We have talents in this country. What we need is to harness the talents and channel them into our developmental strategies,” he said.
Dr. Ibrahim further stated that while carrying out the statutory responsibility of the Office, it was observed that the culture of Intellectual Property Protection within the knowledge institutions were low, hence the need to establish Intellectual Property and Technology Transfer Offices (IPTTOs) to encourage inventive and innovative activities in the knowledge establishments.
He said that prior to the establishment of IPTTOs, researchers in the universities, polytechnics and research establishments were not interested in patenting their research and development results, and rather they published their inventions for the purposes of career progression. He said that with IPTTOs in place in the universities, the situation has changed.
The 13th September of every year was set aside for the Commemoration of African Day by the then African leaders and heads of states to arouse the latent intellectual capabilities of the African youths in Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia.
In his brief presentation, the head of programmes of Innova8 hub, Dr. Obichi Obiajunwa, bemoaned Nigeria’s poor position of 118 out of 132 countries in the global innovation index and called on stakeholders especially the governments to take urgent steps to develop the technology and innovation potential of Nigeria and other parts of Africa.
Innova8 hub is a privately owned facility and a non-profit innovation driven organisation with the mandate to groom generations of innovators, inventors and researchers for national development.
Innov8 is a focal point for innovation start-up, incubation, technology transfer, knowledge and skill impartation, prototypes development and fabrication. The organisation strategically assists organisations and individuals seeking to transfer their ideas into initiatives, inventions into solutions.
Africa must at this time liaise with partners such as the United Nations, the World Bank and countries like China to draw up funds to invest in innovation and technology. That is the only way the continent can compete and create value for its economies.
